Anthropology: A Global Perspective

This popular introduction to anthropology integrates a historical, biological, archaeological, and global approach with ethnographic data available from around the world. Drawing on both classic and recent research in the field, it reflects the current state-of-the-art understanding of social and cultural changes based on the relationships among different types of societies. It demonstrates the diversity of different societies and cultural patterns, but also shows how humans everywhere are fundamentally similar.

Raymond Scupin is professor of anthropology at Lindenwood University. He received his B.A. degree in history and Asian studies, with a minor in anthropology, from the University of California-Los Angeles. He completed his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Dr. Scupin is truly a four-field anthropologist. During graduate school, Dr. Scupin did archaeological and ethnohistorical research on Native Americans in the Santa Barbara region. He did extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Thailand with a focus on understanding the ethnic and religious movements among the Muslim minority. In addition, he taught linguistics and conducted linguistic research while based at a Thai university.

Dr. Scupin has been teaching undergraduate courses in anthropology for over twenty years at a variety of academic institutions, including community colleges, research universities, and a four-year liberal arts university. Thus, he has taught a very broad spectrum of undergraduate students. Through his teaching experience, Dr. Scupin was prompted to write this textbook, which would allow a wide range of undergraduate students to understand the holistic and global perspectives of the four-field approach in anthropology. In 1999 Dr. Scupin received the Missouri Governor's Award for Teaching Excellence.

Dr. Scupin has published many studies based on his ethnographic research in Thailand. He recently returned to Thailand and other countries of Southeast Asia to update his ethnographic data. He is a member of many professional associations, including the American Anthropological Association, the Asian Studies Association, and the Council of Thai Studies. Dr. Scupin has recently authored Religion and Culture: An Anthropological Focus and Race and Ethnicity: An Anthropological Focus on the U.S. and the World, both published by Prentice Hall Press.

Christopher R. DeCorse received his bachelor of arts and master's degrees in anthropology and archaeology, completing his doctorate in archaeology at the University of California-Los Angeles. His theoretical interests include the interpretation of ethnicity, culture change, and variability in the archaeological record. Dr. DeCorse has excavated a variety of prehistoric and historic period sites in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa, but his primary area of research has been in the archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography of Sierra Leone and Ghana. His most recent research has focused on culture contact and change at the African settlement of Elmina, Ghana, the site of the first European tradepost in sub-Saharan Africa. He is currently collaborating on several projects that examine connections between Africa and the Americas.

Dr. DeCorse has taught archaeology and general anthropology in various undergraduate and graduate programs, including the University of Ghana, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Syracuse University, where he is currently an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology. In addition to The Record of the Past, he has co-authored Worldviews in Human Expression, an introduction to the humanities from an anthropological perspective. He also serves on the advisory or editorial boards of Annual Editions in physical anthropology and archaeology, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, and Beads: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers. He has participated on a number of committees and panels, including work as a consultant on human evolution and agricultural origins for the National Center for History in the Schools.

Dr. DeCorse has received several academic honors and awards, including Fulbright and Smithsonian fellowships. He has published more than thirty articles, reviews, and research notes in a variety of publications, including The African Archaeological Review, Historical New Hampshire, Historical Archaeology, and Slavery and Abolition. A volume on his work at Ehnina, Under the Castle Cannon, and an edited volume, West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade, were published in 2001.